Project Geotechnical Engineer Schnabel Engineering Seattle, Washington
On February 6th, 2023, a Mw 7.8 earthquake occurred at 4:17 am local time in southern Turkiye followed by a Mw 7.7 earthquake in the same general region about 9 hours later, at 1:24 pm local time. As a result of this unprecedented series of back-to-back earthquakes, in populated regions, damage was observed for residential buildings, industrial structures, bridges, transportation systems, earth structures, harbors and lifelines. Direct infrastructure loss exceeded $34 billion according to initial estimates. Several dozens of dams in the region experienced low to severe damage during and after these earthquakes. The authors performed a post-earthquake reconnaissance study for the three of the dams around the region. Unmanned aerial vehicles were also deployed to document the damage. The objective of this presentation is to share the post-earthquake reconnaissance observations for the three dams and summarize the additional observations reported by others. The ongoing study aims to establish an extensive summary of the level and pattern of the observed seismic damages and lay the groundwork for quantitative engineering analyses.
